After much deliberation, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that he, too, will withdraw from the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia next week. His announcement follows over a week of intrigue surrounding the disappearance and likely murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the decisions by Wall Street giants and ministers of Britain, France, and the Netherlands to pull out of the conference – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

Now it’s the Times’ turn to analyze how things could’ve gone so horribly wrong at Sears [and, importantly, much less wrong at ESL] under the watch of former Midas toucher Eddie Lampert – NYTimes

Checking in on the status of Amazon’s HQ2. The company’s still officially mum, but there’s something of a cottage industry of “investors, economic officials and developers” trying to “reverse engineer the HQ2 search,” and it seems to be landing on Northern Virginia – NYTimes

[Though not everyone agrees – WSJ]

Palantir Technologies, the data-mining giant known as “one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive companies,” is reportedly weighing going public, with some bankers already suggesting a potential $41 billion valuation depending on the timing of the IPO – WSJ

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is threatening to deny Europe’s financial services firms access to US futures markets unless the EU drops its new post-Brexit plans for oversight of foreign clearing houses – Law360

Campbell Soup CEO Keith McLaughlin is apparently tired of playing nice with Dan Loeb and his Third Point fund, criticizing the activist for his failure to offer any plan to turn around Campbell (other than selling off the company) – Bloomberg

Blockchain for the sea?  I’m not saying that Fishcoin’s jumping the shark, but, you know, if the wetsuit fits – Marketplace

While we’re already in the water, StarKist has agreed to plead guilty to a felony price-fixing charge and pay a fine of up to $100 million for “its role in a broad conspiracy to rig the price of canned and ready-to-eat tuna” between 2011 and 2013 – NYTimes

The public comment period on proposed Volcker Rule changes closed this week, and despite support for the revamp from the Fed and other federal financial regulators, the overwhelming response from banks and trade groups was negative—with many fearing that the change could actually cover more activity than the original rule was designed to address – Law360

CNEX Labs, a California startup backed by Microsoft and Dell, has accused China’s Huawei Technologies in Texas federal court this week of engaging in a “multiyear plan to steal CNEX’s technology”—specifically, solid-state drive storage tech – WSJ

Points to Nebraska for getting incredibly real with its new advertising campaign.  Turns out that tongue-and-cheek is alive and well in the heartland – OmahaWorldHerald

Have a great weekend.